Someone pointed me to Crispin Porter + Bogusky's new site, http://beta.cpggroup.com. I think it might actually be worse.

If anything, it's very ugly, confusing, and I don't really get much value out of it; they seem to be tapping the social web just to tap the social web. That's a tacky and annoying use of Web 2.0. Skittles did it right, but CPB seems to be doing it wrong. This is not an impressive website for an advertising agency. Especially one with such amazing work.
 
Crispin Porter + Bogusky's work makes me feel like their brand should be about connecting big clueless companies with a more modern society. They are doing this insanely well with Burger King and Volkswagen. Why not use that creative power and build a site that is modern, beautiful, and useful?
 
Ugh. At least this was funny to see:

(Also, I thought Barbarian Group did subservientchicken.com, but CPB takes credit for it. Hmm. Anyone know why?)

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Posted 8 months ago

6 comments

Jul 01, 2009
byrneseyeview said...
CP+B connects big, clueless companies to ad awards committees. Their ads are fun to watch, but they always say "We made them hip!" and not "We raised their market share."
Jul 01, 2009
designgeek said...
here's the link: http://beta.cpbgroup.com
Jul 02, 2009
Matt Daniels said...
Hell yea.

There is a great point from Alan Wolk (link below) that most people go to agency websites to find the phone number for a particular office, not to interact with all of their content. As with Modernista, it's all a bit masturbatory.

Then again, the use of youtube at least makes the video on the site load faster, which is definitely not the case on most agency websites that usually crash my firefox.

http://tangerinetoad.blogspot.com/2008/04/recognizing-our-differences-agency.html

Jul 04, 2009
Lars Bos said...
I love your insightful posts. I think when companies get the whole social media thing wrong is when they stop focusing on the users and forget the basics. They usually focus on adding more and more widgets and thingamajigs until it eventually explodes and changes into something very dark and disturbing.

I looked at your portfolio, great stuff...very much like the articles in Wired. I wish I could post comments there, because I had a comment about your broken doorknob theory.

Jul 08, 2009
kwwphoto said...
Barbarian Group actually built subservientchicken.com, but CPB took credit since Burger King is their client--treating Barbarian Group as only a vendor...
Jul 08, 2009
Felix Desroches said...
Oh wow, what is up with the guy in the wig?! Frankly were it not for the crap color scheme and inane twitter stream, it wouldn't be so heinous. Actually, I take that back, it's awful. And why don't the columns at least match up?!

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